Search

Der Beitrag behandelt die Medialität leerer Stühle in den Werken von Vincent van Gogh, Richard Weiner, Egon Schiele, Joseph Kosuth und Eugène Ionesco. Leere Stühle werden als ästhetisch-affektive Figuren untersucht, die historische Perioden und kulturelle Grenzen durch- und überschreiten; dabei präsentieren sie ein spezifisches Porträt von Abwesenheit, das das Subjet trotz seiner physischen Nicht- Gegenwart intensiviert. Die Argumentation gründet in dem dialektischen Prozess von Er- scheinen und Verschwinden, Posthermeneutik und der Theorie des Supplements., This article deals with the mediality of empty chairs in the works by Vincent van Gogh, Richard Weiner, Egon Schiele, Joseph Kosuth and Eugène Ionesco. These empty chairs are explored as aisthetic-affective figures pervading historical periods and cultural boundaries that offer a specific portrait of absence, which is able to intensify the subject despite its physical non-presence. The argument is based on the dialectic process of dis/appearing, posthermeneutics and the theory of the supplement.

Through close examination of the chapter ‘Im Dom’ in Kafka’s novel Der Process, this articles explores how a particular visual mode can shape the writing of a text. The mode analysed here inheres in the setting of Kafka’s chapter: the architecture of the Gothic cathedral, which the art historian Wilhelm Worringer, a contemporary of Kafka’s, saw embodied in the figure of ornament. This encounter between literary language and Gothic space as two phenomena mutually engendering each other opens a perspective onto the ‘motion of writing’ within the text, and onto its visuality and resonance with space. A dynamic and complex current; a chaotic tangle of lines; expression prevailing over meaning; an absent centre; vertigo and pathos — these are the principles shared by Worringer’s Gothic and Kafka’s writing.